Boys Life: Departures And Landfalls

There's a terse, creepy quality to Boys Life's minor-key bluster-punk wailings, and it comes from two sources: 1) the Kansas City band's innate ability to find beautifully tragic-sounding chord progressions amid guitar histrionics, and 2) the dry, air-filled production that gives Departures and Landfalls its hollow, parched feel. The eight-song sophomore album often gets by on drama alone, but if the band struggles with occasional musical awkwardness, that only makes monster songs like "Fire Engine Red" and "Calendar Year" seem that much more unstoppably potent. Silkworm comparisons are beyond inevitable (as are the occasional nods to Fugazi), but Silkworm hasn't made an album this good since the departure of Joel R.L. Phelps—to whom Boys Life frontman Brandon Butler bears a striking vocal similarity.